Real time images are programmed and generative installations, which transcode web content into visual forms in real time. The scope of my research concerns Japanese aesthetics and content related to the Japanese cultural circle, such as: natural catastrophes (e.g. earthquakes), economy, politics and social issues. The installations constantly obtain information from the Internet and generate visual structures which are always up-to-date images of the world. The visual forms on the one hand aggregate data of the complex information technology systems and on the other present possibilities for building images that preserve the visual language of distant cultures and universal symbols. A work of art in this case is treated as a template, a structure or algorithm which can be filled in with content in real time. The features of the visual forms that I propose reflect the features of modern technologies: networking, dispersion, internationalism, universalism, speed. The generativeness of the works stems from the autonomy imposed by the character of the signals coming from the Internet. Their content cannot be precisely foreseen.

The concept of real time images has been referred by me to the aesthetics of Japan – a country where I lived and worked for six months as an engineer (running projects related i.a. to earthquakes and typhoons). The installations that I developed refer to classical features of the Japanese aesthetics, such as: the connection between man and nature, impermanence, ephemerality, asymmetry, fragmentariness, simplicity, but also lavishness and excess.

Real time images are a search for modern forms of visual communication with the help of abstract, always up-to-date, but also ephemeral images. The works are also an attempt to show a direction for working on images in the networked and technology-based world, where generative elements and updates based on signals received in real time seem to be particularly adequate materials for a work of art.